1. Related Art
This disclosure is generally related to network switching equipment. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a system for routing data traffic in a local or enterprise network.
2. Field
The exponential growth of the Internet has made it a popular delivery medium for heterogeneous data flows. Such heterogeneity has caused an increasing demand for bandwidth. As a result, equipment vendors race to build larger and faster switches with versatile capabilities for the Internet backbone. An equally significant increase in bandwidth is also present in the edge networks (such as a local area, home, or enterprise network). Often, an end user needs to deploy a router to route traffic either within his local network, or between the local network and the external network. For example, for a small business that deploys multiple layer-2 broadcast domains (such as subnets or virtual local area networks (VLANs)), to switch traffic between these layer-2 broadcast domains, a router is often used to forward traffic at the network layer (i.e., the IP layer). Also, an enterprise often divides its network into three zones: a local area network which is isolated from the public network (e.g., the Internet), the public network, and a demilitarized zone (DMZ) which is a physical portion of local area network but exposed to the external public network. A router is commonly used to facilitate such network deployment. Hence, routers are often an indispensable part of a business or home network.